


Recovery

by Wiarda



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (then again everyone suffers from that), Angst and Fluff, Game Night, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Movie Night, PTSD, humor too though it's not all heavy stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7312522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wiarda/pseuds/Wiarda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve knew a few things: one, he was alive. Two, he was alive, because James Buchanan Barnes had dragged him out of that river. Three, that same James Buchanan Barnes was nowhere to be found.</p><p>Or, at least, until he stopped looking.</p><p>aka another one of those fics where Bucky recovers because we all know we need those fics sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first Stucky fic I've ever written (or the first Marvel fic I've written at all, actually), and English is my second language, so bear with me. There will be very mild spoilers for Civil War in this if you squint, so warnings ahead for that. 
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy, and don't be shy to leave a comment!

The first week was probably the roughest. Not just because of Tony breaking a glass in his hand after finding out Bucky had shown up the night before at his doorstep with bruises and cuts, and that Steve had taken him in without any discussion. Not just because of the fight they had in the lift about it that morning. Not just because Nat purposely avoided them the entire week after calling him an irresponsible egocentrist. Not because of Bruce’s nervous behaviour, or Wanda and Vision’s half-hearted attempts to stay neutral and siding with Tony rather obviously in the process. None of that.

It was the nights that made it almost unbearable.

Steve had given Bucky the room next to his (it was a guest room that was never used anyway), and despite the tower’s rather great structure, even those walls weren’t thick enough to block out the panting and the screams. It took one, maybe two hours before Steve couldn’t bear it anymore.

He didn’t even bother to knock; he only made sure to open the door slowly. “Hey there, Buck,” he said in a hushed tone. “You alright in here?”

Silence. It was too dark in the room to really distinguish any facial expressions, but the way Bucky’s chest was heaving, spoke volumes.

Steve forced himself to keep his footsteps lighter than a ballerina’s. That proved to be challenging, because now that it mattered most, he felt like every bone in his body was made out of lead. “Deep breaths, buddy. You’re fine, it was just a dream.”

It was almost someone had sucked all the noise out of the room. No breathing, no whirring of the ventilation system, nothing. He took one step closer; just two feet away from the bed.

Wrong move.

“ _Ne dvigaysya!_ ” Bucky’s growl hit Steve harder than a punch in the gut. Immediately, he froze; his ears were almost ringing. Then, his voice weakened. “ _Ne delayte etogo_.”

Steve slowly lifted his hands in surrender, quietly, and stayed there for what felt like a lifetime. Bucky’s whole posture, his whole being was tense. He was gripping the headboard so tightly that Steve was worried he’d rip it off, his jaw was locked, his eyes wide, and he looked like Steve like a deer trapped in headlights - or perhaps it was the other way around. He stayed like that for at least another three minutes. When his breathing finally calmed a bit, Steve had no idea where to begin.

“Do you understand me?” he asked.

Once again, silence. Then, a stiff nod. That was a start, at least.

“Do you recognise me?” Steve went on, stepping back just a bit, so the light from outside could hit his face through the window.

There was no response. Instead, Bucky slowly let go of the headboard and rubbed over his face with his good hand. It was enough of a reaction for Steve to feel safe about lowering his hands.

Minutes passed. “Talk to me, Buck.”

“And say what?” The reply was barely audible. 

There were a lot of things Steve wanted him to say. A lot of things he wanted answered, a lot of things he wanted to know, but he knew now wasn’t the time, nor the place. “Whatever you want to say.”

Bucky kept his mouth shut.

Steve only looked at him. It was Bucky’s third night there; he hadn’t spoken up until this point, hadn’t showered, hadn’t left his room, and had barely eaten. It now dawned on Steve that he probably hadn’t even tried to sleep until now. This was going to be a long process.

“I’m right next door if you need me,” he finally said. “Anything at all.”

The rest of the night, all Steve heard through the wall was the muffled sound of metal fingertips clicking over and over against the wooden headboard.

* * *

Day five. Still, Bucky hadn’t set one foot out of his room.

“That’s a lot of eggs for such a small pan,” Bruce joked, as he peered over Steve’s shoulder. “Hungry?”

Steve didn’t even bother smiling out of politeness. The doctor knew just as well as he did that this breakfast wasn’t just for him. “He loves scrambled eggs.”

Bruce’s cheerful attitude fell. “How is he doing?”

“The same.” Except that he was now just talking in his sleep, instead of screaming himself awake. Always in a foreign language; Steve was pretty sure it was a different one every night. 

Apparently, Bruce wasn’t happy with that answer either. “He needs to eat.”

“He eats. Barely anything, but he does.” Steve stirred the scrambled eggs one more time. “It’s a work in process.”

Bruce shuffled the salt and pepper shakes around on the counter for a moment, before he pushed his glasses up and cleared his throat. “Y’know, Steve - I… I think you’re doing the right thing, here. Even if it’s probably not the safest method. Don’t let Tony’s moping get to you.”

At that, Steve raised an eyebrow. “You know he probably heard that, right?”

“Do you really think he’d eavesdrop on us?”

“I don’t think.” He looked up at the security camera on his right hand side, in the corner of the room. “I know. It’s Tony.”

To his surprise, Bruce laughed. “Touché.”

The scrambled eggs were moved from the pan to a plate, alongside four pieces of toast, two plastic butter cups and bacon strips. “Still. Thank you.”

Bruce smiled his typical smile. Warm, calm, and a hell of a lot more mature than he was used to from some of his other colleagues. “It’s nothing. Just needed to be said.”

For that, Steve did find the effort to lift the corners of his mouth. “You’re a good man, Bruce.”

“So are you. Guess this Bucky must mean one hell of a lot to you to go this far, huh?”

Maybe it was because he hadn’t really slept properly in five days, or maybe it was because that comment was achingly spot on, but Steve actually laughed. 

“You have no idea, Doc.”

When Steve entered Bucky’s room, he was surprised to still find him in bed; in the past few days, it had seemed that he usually slept somewhere between two and four hours a night, then gave up and started to sketch at the desk in the corner of the room. Steve hadn’t seen any of the results, only the growing pile of crumpled paper in the bin next to that desk.

“Rise and shine,” he greeted him, more cheerfully than he’d intended to. For some reason, the thought of Bucky still in bed at nine in the morning felt almost like winning a lottery. Partially because it meant that he’d probably slept longer than four hours tonight, but mostly because today, he wasn’t greeted by Bucky’s back facing him, and perhaps the new face-to-face contact meant more verbal contact as well. “Got you breakfast.”

As expected, Bucky hadn’t actually still been asleep, seeing as he turned around to face him way too soon, but the way he blinked against the sunlight told Steve that it was a close call. What he hadn’t expected, though, was the hesitant smile that tugged at the corners of Bucky’s mouth. “Thanks. Bet you’ll make a great housewife, someday.”

For a moment, Steve had no idea what to say. He knew it was dangerous to get his hopes up too fast and too soon, but Bucky making jokes? That was a lot more process than he thought he was going to make in three weeks, let alone five days. “I don’t think that being a 96 year old male really fits the profile of a trophy wife, Buck.”

“It does if you cook,” he simply answered. As Steve handed him the plate, he got a look in return that wasn’t quite the smile that Steve remembered from seventy years ago, but still clear enough to see the real Bucky lingering behind that curtain of fear and uncertainty.

His real Bucky.

* * *

Two weeks. Tony had slowly come around, at least about the part where he’d called Bucky a ‘real, serious danger’ to everyone in the Avengers Tower and possibly the rest of New York City. He still didn’t appear quite fond of the idea that he was keeping man in his house that was on the FBI’s most wanted list, but it was a big step for Stark standards. Natasha had started eating meals around the same time as the rest of them again, which meant that she wasn’t trying to evade Steve anymore, at least, even if she still did avoid the subject of Bucky completely. Bruce had even attempted to have an actual chat with Bucky face to face, but thanks to some bad luck and an ill-timed fallback in the past few days, the only words he’d gotten from him were a terrified “no” and “don’t”, before he’d even managed to set one foot in his room.

Still, overall, Bucky was doing rather great. His injuries were healing and fading, he was becoming more and more talkative, and as days passed, it was like the layers of the Winter Soldier were carefully stripped off from him, letting more and more James Buchanan Barnes shine through. When it came to social interaction with at least Steve, Bucky was doing fantastic.

When it came to leaving the room, not so much. He had a private toilet accessible from within is own bedroom, so that had never been a reason for him to leave it. Neither had food, because even if Steve knew it was probably better for Bucky’s independence if he stopped bringing it, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. It felt like throwing his loyalty to him out of the window. So, in conclusion, Bucky hadn’t left his room for two weeks.

He probably hadn’t washed in at least three, if not four. It was starting to get hard to ignore. So, perhaps it was time to drop a hint.

“You know, there’s a lot to say about this century, but its showers aren’t bad. Not bad at all.”

Bucky laughed. He was sitting at his desk again, but not hunched over as he used to, when he was completely absorbed by his own thoughts. Now, he wasn’t so much frantically sketching, as he was just doodling, probably. “You’re telling me I stink?”

“I’m not saying you smell like daisies.”

He was still smiling. “Rude.”

Steve raised an eyebrow, but he was grinning too. “Just doing both of us a favour. I wasn’t kidding about the showers.”

Bucky hesitated for a moment, but then got up from his desk chair and walked (or rather, limped) towards the door. His ankle was a lot less swollen than it had been that one night he’d showed up at the door, but apparently, it still hurt. “Lead the way, then.”

So he did. The nearest bathroom was at the other end of the hallway, and while there usually wasn’t anyone around in the bedroom area at three in the afternoon, it wasn’t hard to see Bucky tense up as he walked out of the door. That, Steve had expected. What he hadn’t seen coming, was that he’d immediately tap him on the shoulder and throw his metal arm over his neck to find some support for his bad ankle.

Steve suspected that it really had nothing to do with his ankle, especially when he found out that one door at the other end had opened, because naturally, the one time when nobody was supposed to be here, this was suddenly the place to be.

And not just for Bruce, or even Natasha. It had to be Tony, walking in their direction. “Morning,” he greeted, eyes fixed on Bucky, probably without even caring that it wasn’t morning at all. “Bucky, right? Great to finally meet you. Big fan of how you killed a ton of people and how you’re now taking refuge in my home without asking, because mister Beefcake here told you it’s cool. Big, big fan,” he said, looking him over once, and then flashed him a sickeningly polite smile. “Enjoy your stay.”

Steve glared at him. “Your father would have taken him in in a heartbeat.”

Tony had already walked by, and didn’t even bother looking over his shoulder as he replied. “Yeah, well, I’m not my dad.”

“Clearly. You don’t even come close,” Steve snapped, but a warm hand on his chest stopped him from turning around. Bucky gave him a silent look and shook his head. Not worth it, pal.

When they made it to the bathroom, Bucky dropped himself on the closed toilet seat to take his socks off. “I thought you’d handled everything with him?”

Steve avoided eye contact. “Sort of. It’s a work in progress.”

“You can’t just take me into a house that’s not yours and expect everyone to be fine with it. I’m not an innocent puppy.”

At that, he laughed. “Tony’s allergic to dogs anyway. He’s hard to please, let it go.”

Bucky pulled his T-shirt over his head, held it in his hands and rubbed little circles into the loose fabric with his right thumb. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

“Don’t do that, Buck. You would have done the same for me.” Steve was going through the soaps and shampoos in the cabinet above the sink, and took out the ones he preferred most (and that smelled the least like Tony’s usual ones). Behind him, he heard Bucky scoff.

“That rule only adds up if you’re equals,” he muttered. “You have to face facts, Steve. You’ve been America’s national hero since… what, 1941? I’m the polar opposite.”

Steve tensed up. “That wasn’t you. They’d messed with your brain, you couldn’t help it.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t still me. It was me. All that time.” When Steve turned around, he saw that Bucky’s gaze had dropped to the floor. “Tony Stark has got more than enough reason to hate my guts, Steve. Probably more than he knows of.”

Steve didn’t reply at first; instead, he ran a bath, because he didn’t think that letting Bucky stand up for a shower after needing support to even walk here would really work out. When he bath was halfway full, he threw in some soap to get it to foam. “We’re still equals. Two weeks ago, I didn’t take the Winter Soldier in -” Bucky flinched at the name, “- I took Bucky Barnes in. And it wasn’t Captain America who did that, it was Steve Rogers. The same Steve as before 1941.”

Bucky balanced himself against the wall as he stood up, and then pulled his borrowed sweatpants and boxers down in one go. When Steve politely averted his gaze, he snorted.

“Oh, please. We were both in the military. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

Except it was. Not anatomically; he’d spent most of later childhood with Bucky, so it wasn’t him being nude that was new to him. What was, were all the scars surrounding the base of his left arm, like a crown made out of flesh. When he stepped into the hot water, he hissed.

“Right.” Steve cleared his throat. “There are towels in the right hand cabinet, there’s soap right behind you -”

“Can you stay?” Bucky interrupted him. It wasn’t a plea, it was a genuine question. He looked up at Steve; suddenly, behind the greasy hair, the stubble, the scars and the bags under his eyes, he looked like his twenty year old self again. His Bucky.

“If you want me to.”

\----

It had taken a thirty minute soak, twenty shared memories and a friendly backrub while soaping him up to get Bucky to this point, but for the first time since he’d seen him in this age, Steve could proudly say that his friend was completely relaxed. If anything, it was completely worth the cramps in his neck and back from sitting in a weird position on the side of the bathtub for so long.

“Can you wet your hair for a moment?” he asked. Bucky slid down the side just enough to dip his hair into the water, and then slid up again. “Thanks.”

“Are you really planning on washing my hair?” he mumbled with a grin.

“Somebody ought to.” He poured a little bit of shampoo on the palm of his hand. Probably not even half of what his housemates used on a daily basis, but if there was anything he’d learned from growing up during the Great Depression, it was that frugality was never a bad idea.

“So first the cooking, and now this? Bonus housewife points.”

Steve spread the shampoo on both hands and slowly started to massage Bucky’s scalp. “Not until I see a ring, mister.”

Bucky snorted at that. “Maybe if we put a wig on you and say you’re a bodybuilder lady, we could get away with it.”

“Well, a lot has changed in the past seventy years,” Steve answered, a lot more serious than Bucky had been. “Don’t know if you picked up on it, but I don’t think the wig and the lies are really necessary anymore.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows at that, but kept his eyes closed. “Well, how about that.” Then, he smiled. “Good job, 2016. Good job.”

There was a short silence. “Is this okay?” Steve finally asked, as he scrubbed behind his ears.

“It’s pretty good. Didn’t lose your touch in the past seventy years, at least when it comes to scalp massages.”

“In my defence, your body has kind of changed since I last gave you a backrub.”

“Says you.”

Steve smiled. “Touché.” He knew he’d gotten shampoo pretty much everywhere it was needed, but kept on going for a while longer anyway. He’d missed this. It was only when he did start rinsing it all out, when he spoke again. “Why did you come here?”

Bucky’s reply didn’t come immediately. “Because I knew you’d be here, and I also knew that I had to be where you were.”

“Because you had to be where I was, or because the Winter Soldier did?” Steve asked quietly.

The shampoo was rinsed out, and Bucky slowly sat up again, causing the water to slosh against the sides of the tub. “I’m not sure.” Then, after another beat of silence: “Why did you take me in?”

Steve could still see him, that night, standing in front of the closed doors of the lobby at three in the morning, on the security footage. Only Tony and himself had been awake at the time; Tony because his sleep patterns were always messed up, Steve because ever since the fiasco with HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D., he hadn’t been able to put Bucky out of his head. He’d tried to find him; weeks, months on end, but it seemed like he had vanished.

Until he was right there, on the security monitors projected on the left wall. He was hooded, and he was wearing gloves, but his mouth was visible and incredibly hard to miss. Steve couldn’t have been happier that Tony had chosen to sit with his back facing that wall.

“I’m going to take a walk,” Steve announced, eyes fixed on the screens.

“Hmm,” was all he got in reply. It was enough. At least it showed that Tony was too distracted by whatever he was doing to pay attention to the wall behind him.

Downstairs, Steve silently checked for weapons before he approached him, opened the door for him, and let him in. “What are you - why -”

He hadn’t replied. Had barely even looked at him. When Steve took a step towards him, he stepped back and drew a knife; a moment later, he’d dropped it.

“I took you in, because it was you,” Steve muttered, as he toweled off his hands.

“I almost attacked you.”

“But you didn’t.”

Bucky swallowed. Then, with a hint of uncertainty, he smiled. “Guess not.”

* * *

Sleeping still wasn’t going great. Better than the first week, at least, but even now that he wasn’t screaming or talking to himself in his sleep anymore, Steve knew that the nightmares hadn’t stopped.

Lately, instead of going to his room and talk about nothing, Steve had taken Bucky’s sleeping patterns as an opportunity to gently coax him out of his room more often. After all, there was a much slimmer chance or running into anyone in the living room at two in the morning, so every night he would let him pick a movie on Netflix, and they’d watch it together, side by side.

“Really, Buck? _Mean Girls_?” Steve took the bowl of popcorn from the coffee table and pulled his legs up on the couch.

Meanwhile, Bucky was still struggling with which holographic button did what on the remote control, in the form of a tiny version of the giant screen in front of them. “Nat recommended it.”

Steve stopped chewing and frowned. “You spoke to Natasha?”

“She came by last Tuesday, while you were out.” Bucky shrugged. “Said she wanted me to feel welcome.”

Steve huffed. “Right, so what did she actually say?”

“No, really, that was it. And that she knew that we were doing a film thing at night and that I absolutely had to make you watch _Mean Girls_.”

“Surprisingly courteous.” Meaning that she definitely had something more up her sleeve, but that was something he probably had to discuss with her in private.

Or maybe it really just was _Mean Girls_ , because the entire movie was one big, twenty-first century, teenage mess in Steve’s opinion. Sounded like a very Natasha-esque thing to make him sit through. Much to his surprise, Bucky adored it.

They were about halfway in, when Bucky threw his right arm over the back of the couch. Two minutes later, that arm moved to Steve’s shoulders. It didn’t really take more invitation than that; the moment Steve moved his head to Bucky’s shoulder, it was like it was like their late teens all over again. It was safe. It was fine.

“What are you watching?”

Steve sat up straight, like he was struck by lightning. For some reason, he felt caught, but also incredibly tense. He hadn’t expected anyone to come here when Bucky was around. “Wanda,” he muttered. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

Wanda sat down on the end of the couch that Steve had abandoned for Bucky. “Same reason as you two, I guess. Sleep’s a challenge.” She had braided her hair and was wearing a loose T-shirt with sweatpants. Braid aside, she really did match Bucky and Steve. “Is that _Mean Girls_?”

Steve cleared his throat. “Nat’s idea.”

“And we love it,” Bucky added, apparently not bothered at all by the unexpected company.

“He loves it,” Steve corrected.

Wanda laughed a bit. “I’m on his side with this one. Sorry, Steve.”

“Hear that?” Bucky lightly poked Steve in the ribs with a metal finger. “I win. I’m Bucky, by the way.”

Wanda smiled, but didn’t take here eyes off the screen. “So I’ve heard. I’m Wanda.”

Bucky looked her over and smiled back, even if she wasn’t looking at him. “So I’ve heard. Want some popcorn?”

He took the bowl off of Steve’s lap (without protest; he was going to offer it to her anyway, it was common courtesy) and handed it over to her. Now she did look up at him, and smiled back. “Thanks.”

Steve didn’t move his head back on Bucky’s shoulder, but didn’t protest either when he ran his fingertips over the back of his neck. He wasn’t the touchy-feely type, not at all, but there had been times in Brooklyn in the late thirties where winters were cold and money was tight. As soon as you’ve spent months in a row sleeping in the same bed as someone else, your boundaries with that person change.

They watched the rest of the movie together. Nobody mentioned the way Wanda hogged the popcorn, or how Steve never shifted once with his legs half-tucked underneath him, or how Bucky jumped from time to time because of sounds nobody else heard. They were all there for a reason, and it wasn’t a shared love for Lindsay Lohan.

And, when Steve suggested that they all went back to bed for a last few hours by the time the end credits were rolling, nobody said that they didn’t want to; they all knew. Bucky didn’t say he didn’t want to be alone, yet Steve knew. Steve didn’t promise he would stay with him that night, yet Bucky knew. So, when the three of them went down to the hallway with their bedrooms, neither of them explained why Steve didn’t walk Bucky to his room, but to his own room instead.

If Wanda knew, she didn’t mention it.

* * *

Shared meals didn’t really occur in the Avengers Tower. They were all lone wolves; they were on the same team, yes, and friends, yes, but in their own, solitary way. Steve hadn’t seen Clint in over six months. Hadn’t seen Thor in much longer. Heck, he hadn’t even spoken to Sam in a month.

So, that being said, it was usually a little strange when there was someone else at the kitchen table having breakfast when you were planning to do the same. A little awkward, even.

“Morning,” Nat greeted, a cup of coffee in her left hand and scrolling through the news on a holographic screen in front of her with her right. As Steve went through the self-opening cabinets to find a plate (there was a silent war going on between Vision, Tony and Nat about where everything was supposed to go, so the location of the plates and cups switched around every two days or so), she scraped her throat, took another bite of her toast and threw him a look. “I’ll be gone in a sec.”

Steve made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “You live here too, you know. I’m not hoping to get rid of you.”

“No, I’m serious. I was about to leave, so if you were planning on starting a tedious conversation about the weather or a baseball game or something, reconsider.”

Well, there was something he wanted to ask. “Bucky told me you spoke to him.”

A cheeky smile flashed on Natasha’s face for the briefest moment. “Have you watched Mean Girls yet?”

Steve decided to ignore that. “So what exactly are you up to?”

Nat raised her eyebrows. “Who says I’m up to something?”

“The fact that you were uncharacteristically nice to him, after calling me an ‘irresponsible egocentrist’ for taking him in.” If he sounded accusatory, he didn’t care.

“Yeah, well, people change,” Natasha explained with a shrug.

“Not in three weeks, they don’t.”

Nat clicked the digital newspaper away with the tap of her finger as she put the last bite of toast with jam in her mouth. “Bucky did.”

For a moment, Steve was at a loss of words. Bucky did. She had a point, but even if she did, her case wasn’t the same. “That’s called recovery. Walking into a bedroom of someone you never wanted in this building and gave me the cold shoulder for for over a week, and then pretending everything is fine - that’s behaving out of character.”

Something in Natasha’s posture shifted. She stood up, put her coffee down and walked over to Steve with her chin up; even though she was one and a half foot shorter than he was, and she had no military affiliation at all, she appeared to breathe the air of someone higher in command. Instinctively, Steve straightened his spine.

“Because God forbid I sympathise with a man who’s been trained and twisted and shaped into a Russian killing machine, who’s got a past that haunts him, who’s killed and can’t forget, who can’t sleep at night because every damn night he’s remembered that they took everything that made him human and turned him into a monster,” she said, in such a dangerously cool and collected voice that it almost sent a shiver up Steve’s spine. Then, she took a deep breath. “Look, Steve, I know how much you care about him and I know it makes you cautious, but I have to say, your trust issues concerning him aren’t that charming.”

She didn’t give him the opportunity to recollect himself before she took her coffee and ;eft, in her own, preserved fashion. In fact, he was barely given the chance to process any of that at all, before subject in question came walking through the door, yawning, barefeet, with a borrowed pair of fresh jeans and his brown leather jacket on. Only that jacket, without zipping it up

“Morning,” he greeted, before he took an apple out of the fruit basket. When Steve didn’t blink, he looked down. “Oh, right. The shirt thing. I tried one of yours on before the jacket, but a loose thread got stuck in my arm and long story short, I owe you a new T-shirt.”

Steve was barely listening. His mind was still occupied with trying to process that Natasha was right; maybe, the whole world wasn’t planning on taking away what he’d finally gotten back. Maybe there were other people out there who looked at the man in front of him, with his wiggling toes and apple juice running down his chin and an outfit that suggested that he did adult movies in his spare time, and who’d see James Buchanan Barnes,\his Bucky, not the Winter Soldier.

Steve was a little light-headed with how relieved that made him feel. “Hey,” he said, already forgotten about the fact that Bucky had greeted him before. “Slept well?”

Bucky raised an eyebrow, apparently aware that Steve hadn’t caught a word of what he’d said before, but didn’t mention it. “Not too bad.” He wiped the dribble of juice off of his face, and then smiled at him. Not a grin, nothing cheeky; almost a bit shy. “Suppose having someone at my side really did help.”

It did. Not just for Bucky, either. It was the first time in a long time, longer than Bucky had even been there, that Steve had slept more than six hours in a row without waking up once. When he did wake up, he woke up to Bucky laying on his stomach next to him, metal arm stuffed under his pillow and his right hand placed palm-down in the middle of Steve’s chest, right above his heart. He’d looked younger than ever, and he knew in that moment that it was a sight he definitely didn’t mind waking up to.

But it was now, with Natasha’s words still echoing in his mind and Bucky’s smile tugging at his heartstrings, that he knew it was something he always wanted to wake up to.

* * *

In the three weeks that followed, Bucky slowly integrated with the rest of the bunch, and he clicked well with just about everyone. He and Bruce were friendly after a while, even if their interests didn’t quite align; Vision was polite as ever, he clicked well with Natasha, and somehow even managed to build a sort of brotherly bond with Wanda. It probably helped a lot that he spoke her native tongue.

The only one that remained painfully absent, was Tony. Steve had barely seen him around in almost a month; he was starting to think that he’d actually started living in one of his houses in the Bahamas, right when he walked in on another movie night. 

There had been a lot of those, lately. Most of them with the whole gang, occasionally still just Steve and Bucky, during the bad nights. This was one of those bad nights. Bucky had woken up at twelve thirty in cold sweat, panicking. He hadn’t recognised Steve as an enemy, but it was a close call, so he’d taken him to the living room, put on a random movie and without another word, pulled his head to his chest so he could listen to his heartbeat. It had become the image of their coping mechanism; on the couch, Bucky’s head on Steve’s chest, and both staring with empty eyes at movies that were quicker, sharper and way more complicated than the ones they used to watch.

It was just like that when Tony had walked in. Steve was tracing patterns on Bucky’s back, and Bucky was half-asleep again. It had taken him an hour to get that far, yet he immediately jumped when he heard the sound of the door.

“Oh, ugh.” Tony almost looked scandalised. He also looked like he hadn’t seen his bed in a year. “Get a room.”

It was two o’clock in the morning, Tony had just ruined Bucky’s zen moment by being himself after a month of avoiding both of them, but it wasn’t even that that pissed Steve off. There was something in Tony’s voice, something in his tone that really rubbed him up the wrong way. “Can’t handle two grown men watching a film together in your living room?”

At that, he laughed, but it didn’t sound very cheerful. “It’s not 1944 anymore, you know. I don’t care who you snuggle, just don’t do it in my sight, with anyone. Doesn’t suit you.”

“We don’t ‘snuggle’,” Bucky said. For some reason, that kind of stung.

Tony walked over to the mini fridge behind the couch and took out a beer. At two in the morning. “Sure looks like it.”

Steve tried his very best not to let him get under his skin, but he was already there, without even trying. “Why are you here?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Tony replied, definitely not sorry, “Didn’t realise I had to validate my motives while walking around in my own house. My bad.”

Right, that was it. Steve got up to face him properly. “You’ve been avoiding me for an entire month and now you suddenly show up again. Why?”

Tony didn’t seem very impressed by Steve invading his personal bubble; he stared right back. “Why I’ve been avoiding you? Really, no clue? Maybe it’s got something to do with the human Kalashnikov you adopted.”

“Bucky is not -”

“Isn’t he? It’s all over the internet, Cap. That man who’s using you as his pillow has killed more people than you can count and has done more damage than you can imagine. I don’t care if he was brainwashed or voodoo’d -”

Steve felt like he was boiling. “If you don’t keep -”

“Steve, it’s not worth -”

“Oh, shut it, Ivan.”

That was it. Steve grabbed Tony by the shirt, dragged him over to the wall and pinned him against it. “Do you really think that’s fair? He wasn’t himself, Tony.”

Tony struggled to get the words out. “It’s no excuse. Doesn’t make him innocent.”

He wanted one blow, just one good blow right in the stomach, because Steve honestly couldn’t wrap his head around how utterly ignorant Tony was. He’d almost gotten that punch in, too, when two strong hands pulled him away.

“Enough,” Bucky told him. “He’s right. You know he is.”

It took three deep breaths to calm down enough to reason. “Why - what?” But Bucky didn’t listen. He was focused on Tony, instead.

“I know what I did. I remember everything. Everyone’s got that one moment in their lives that they regret forever and always wish they could go back to to change everything about it if they had the chance. Guess you have one too. To me, that’s all of them since they found me all those years ago. Each and every one.”

Tony was unnervingly quiet. Then, after almost a full minute: “Have you ever lost someone you cared about?”

The corner of Bucky’s mouth twitched humorlessly. “I was in the military during World War Two. You do the math.”

“No,” Tony interrupted. “Worse than that. Someone you loved.”

A longer silence. “My dad died when I was eight.”

“Yes. That.” Tony rubbed his chin, and carefully avoided eye contact. “My folks too. Car crash, just like that. Crushed me. Kind of makes it hard to deal with people who’ve crushed people and their loved ones on a regular basis.”

Bucky had gone rigid. It was subtle, probably so subtle that only Steve could see it, but the look in his eyes gave it away. He was terrified. “I’m really sorry for your loss.”

Tony gave a stiff nod. “Yeah, well, that won’t help batshit, but thanks.” Then, he gave Steve one last look; it was as much of an apology as Tony gave in such situations. “I’m off to bed. Enjoy your movie night.”

Tony put down his unopened beer on the coffee table and walked off. It was only when Steve was sure that he was gone, that he turned to Bucky again. “What happened there?”

Bucky just stared over Steve’s shoulder at the wall, still out of his element. “Don’t ask.”

Realisation dawned on him in the form of his blood turning to ice. “Did you…” 

Bucky’s whole posture was tense, his jaw was clenched. There were tears in his eyes.

“Buck? Did you?”

The reply was barely louder than a whisper. “Yes.”

* * *

A lot changed after that night. Firstly, Steve and Bucky had come to the silent agreement that what had been discussed right then (or rather, what hadn’t), would never be brought up again and Tony couldn’t know. Didn’t need to know. Was better off not knowing. Whatever the excuse was, neither of them would tell him.

Secondly, Tony himself changed. It was a little bit startling at first, to see him hang around at lunchtime with the rest, cracking jokes and whatnot like nothing had ever happened, but it wasn’t an unpleasant surprise. At least the tension in the house had subsided, somewhat.

Until game night happened.

It started off fine. Tony wanted to see if Vision could beat anyone at chess; turned out he could, after three rounds of every single one of them trying to beat him. The only one that had managed to win once was Wanda, but judging from the soft smile that danced around his lips as his king fell, that might just have been Vision’s plan.

After chess came poker, during which Bruce lost hopelessly within the first three rounds and then wandered off to the kitchen to bake cookies instead. Steve had a gut feeling that he hadn’t really wanted to join in on this game, anyway. Vision was the next one to lose, then Wanda, then Steve himself (he’d been lucky with the first few hands, poker wasn’t really his cup of tea), until just Tony, Natasha and Bucky were left. Tony was a risky player and kept on talking throughout the game, making it difficult to guess when he was bluffing or not. Natasha just had a killer pokerface, and Steve wasn’t really sure why Bucky was still in the game - and even leading - because honestly, Bucky had always been a terrible liar.

Tony cocked an eyebrow as he looked at his cards. “All in,” he said, shoving the rest of his chips to the centre of the table. Vision tried to peek at his hand, seeing as he wasn’t playing anymore anyway, but Tony pushed his face away. “Your pokerface is terrible, seriously. Go look at Romanoff’s cards.”

Natasha’s turn. She’d been tapping her fingernails on the table almost consistently since the beginning of the name, occasionally humming a melody along with it. “Okay. All in.”

Bucky didn’t hesitate either. He pushed his stack of chips in and turned to Tony with a smile Steve didn’t trust in the least. “Show ‘em.”

Tony put down his cards with a rather satisfied smirk. “Full house, three Kings.”

Natasha was next; her grin was possibly even more pleased. “Pair of fours,” she said.

At that, Tony raised an eyebrow. “You seem really happy about having lost so horribly.”

She wiggled her eyebrows. “Buck?”

Bucky put his cards down. Straight flush, 8-9-10-Jack-Queen, all diamonds. “I think grandpa just beat you, Stark.”

Natasha high fived him, and Vision and Wanda applauded, but Tony narrowed his eyes. “You cheated. You had to be cheating.”

Steve laughed. “I don’t know, I’ve never seen a rookie at poker be able to cheat their way into getting good hands.”

“That’s because he shuffled the cards. Must have done something with the cards.”

“I shuffled the cards,” Vision corrected, “and you cut the stack. I believe it was fair play.”

Tony drummed his fingers on the table, obviously irritated, and took another swig of his beer. Then, he realised something, because the next moment, he put the beer down with more force than the can could handle without spilling. “Jesus Christ, Romanoff. You were tapping out my cards in morse to him, weren’t you?”

“Nope,” Steve replied, before Natasha could say anything. “I know morse. That wasn’t it.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Fine. Russian morse. Soviet morse, whatever.”

Natasha scoffed. “No such thing as Russian morse.”

“Well, actually -” Vision started, before he was kicked in the foot. He gave a rather confused look at Natasha, but then went on: “There is a Russian morse code, and it’s usually taught with melodies, as a mnemonic. The melodies differ per school, but now that you mention it, I believe she was actually humming messages to him -”

“Fine,” Natasha interrupted. “I cheated. Vision, you’re a party pooper.”

“Hey.” Wanda shot her a look. “Says the cheater.”

Tony crossed his arms with an expression that Steve had heard Natasha describe as his bitch face. “Thank you, Wanda.”

“Wait, hold on.” Bruce was holding a plate of hot cookies and gestured for Tony to take his feet off of his seat, so he could sit down again. “If you were cheating, why didn’t you win?”

Natasha shrugged and stole a cookie. “It was never about winning, it was about making Tony lose.”

Tony huffed. “Thoughtful. I own this place, you know. I own the bed you sleep in, the food you eat - I own that cookie.”

“I baked the cookie, I own the cookie. She can have it. Try again,” Bruce said. “So you helped Bucky cheat, purely so one of you could beat Tony at poker?”

Natasha shrugged. “Russian bros before American hoes.” 

Surprisingly, it was Bucky who initiated the fistbump. The Brooklyn boy who’d just accepted his status as ‘Russian bro’.

Part of Steve wanted to correct him, another part felt strangely proud of him.

“And now you’re calling me a hooker in my own house. You’re all fantastic, really.” He drank whatever was left of his beer after the spillage in one go, and muttered something about where Rhodey was when you needed him. “Game night’s over, Nat’s ruined it, I’m going to bed, goodbye.”

Steve was about to protest and call him out on his drama, when Bruce held out the plate of cookies to Tony as he got up. “You know, we could also play a boardgame instead. Monopoly?”

Natasha’s eyes went big and tried to kick Bruce under the table, but hit Wanda instead and ended up having to silently apologise instead of pleading Bruce to take those words back. Perhaps that was a good thing, because it looked like Bruce knew exactly what he was doing; Tony stayed where he was.

“Oh, what the hell. One more game, who cares,” he said after a (long, dramatic) pause.

“Just one thing, though.” Wanda narrowed her eyes at Natasha. “Before we play Monopoly -”

“- and ruin all friendships in the progress -” Steve added.

“ - yes, before we do that; how did you even know what Tony’s cards were?”

Tony looked rather impressed with that question. “Yeah, very good point. What kind of spy voodoo was that?”

Natasha was a little less impressed. “You literally sat with your back to that mirror over there. The entire time. I just had the best angle.”

Steve frowned. “So that’s why you wanted to switch seats with me?”

“Yep.”

Bucky sighed, with a hand on his heart. “And here I was, thinking you wanted to sit next to me to celebrate our Russian broship.”

Natasha gave him a sympathetic pat on his metal arm. “Sorry for crushing your heart.” Then, she turned to Steve. “And sorry that I cockblocked.”

Bucky’s eyebrows shot up at that. “Cockblocked?”

“Easy, Nat,” Tony warned, as he dug the Monopoly box out of one of the drawers underneath the coffee table. “They’re from the twenties. Don’t want to swear in front of the grandpas. Or, you know, wave your gay pride flag too hard.”

Ah. So that was where this was going. Again. “Really? After what happened three nights ago, you really want to do the ‘you’re homophobic old men’ play?”

Bruce nearly choked on his chocolate chip cookie and looked as if he’d just seen a unicorn tapdance on the table. “What exactly happened between you two three nights ago?”

“Nothing between Tony and Steve, I assure you,” Natasha replied, before Steve could get a word in. “Not since he’s been sharing his bed with his big pal Bucky, at least.”

Steve shot Wanda a silent look, because for all he knew, she was the only one who could’ve shared something like that. Wanda, on her part, looked just as criminalised as he did.

“Oh, relax. Nobody told me, you’re just crap at hiding things. He’s been wearing your clothes for at least a month and you’re taking baths together. You do the math.”

For the first time in what felt like ages since the conversation started, there was a silence that went on for just a little too long. Eventually, Steve gave in and sighed. “It’s not like that.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “I mean, no offence to anyone, but if our Cap is gay, I’ll eat my shoe. They’re five hundred dollars each, but I’d do it. After all those stories from my dad about how you had such a huge, dorky crush on Maggie -”

“Peggy,” Steve corrected calmly.

“Peggy,” Tony went on, “it just wouldn’t have been an option.”

Another silence. “Bisexuality is a thing that exists,” Steve lightly reminded him.

Tony laughed. “Yeah. I know. Believe me, plenty of experience with team ‘bi and definitely not shy about bringing a friend’.”

“Don’t want to know.” Thank God for Wanda.

“Right, kid in the room. Sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“I think he’s suggesting that he might be bi,” Bruce pointed out, making eyecontact with Steve in a little uncertain way, but when Steve flashed him a grateful smile, he returned it. “Just, you know. Before you got side-tracked.”

Tony raised his eyebrows. “Steve?”

“Doc’s right.”

“Huh.” Tony looked impressed. He shot a questioning look at Bucky for a very short moment, but Steve pretended not to notice. “Congratulations, then. Anyone feeling champagne? I’m feeling champagne.”

Now it was Steve’s turn to look confused. “Why champagne?”

“To celebrate your coming out. Takes some guts to finally be your true self at the age of two hundred and seventy.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but saw Bucky chuckle next to Natasha and saw Vision try to hide his grin behind his hand. Well, perhaps this wasn’t too bad. It could have been a lot worse.

(And it was, by the true end of the night, but that hadn’t so much to do with sexuality as it had to do with the combination of champagne and Bruce completely owning Tony at Monopoly without cheating once. As it turned out, Bruce had _really_ known what he was doing when he’d suggested that game.)

 

\-------

 

Steve had known this day would come, eventually. He’d hoped it would happen somewhere at the start, back when everyone had been prepared for it, when everyone had still tiptoed around him the way people usually tiptoed around Bruce whenever he was tense. In that case, at least nobody would have lost their trust. You can’t ruin what you haven’t built up yet.

It was around noon. Tony had taken Wanda on a shopping trip (not because Wanda was such a shopper, but because no matter how Tony denied it, everyone knew that he kind of got a kick out of spoiling people who hadn’t grown up with a lot of money), Vision was off doing God knew what and Bruce, Nat, Bucky and Steve were on the couch having a pizza lunch, just as Nat put on the news.

It was a montage of war footage in Syria, with people screaming, praying, as bombs were dropped on already crumbling buildings. There were gunshots too, shouts, terror; it was all even worse through Tony’s hyperexpensive speakers. Even Steve had to concentrate not to flinch at the sight.

“It’s good that they cover this,” Bruce commented, even if his voice was a little softer than usual. “They ignore the situation with Islamic State way too much, lately. It’s terrible. Al” they focus on are t 

The moment Nat did that, chewing on her pizza pepperoni, Steve heard Bucky’s plate shatter on the floor. He was pale, icy pale, his eyes were wide, and he was barely breathing. Steve felt like someone had clamped two metal fists around his lungs.

“Nat,” he warned slowly. “Mute it.”

Fortunately, it was kind of a common thing among the Avengers to be alert enough to know something’s off when someone drops a plate, so she hit the mute button immediately. “Fuck.”

“Bucky,” Steve said softly, carefully, as if he was approaching a wild animal. “Bucky, deep breaths, okay?”

But Bucky didn’t respond. Instead, he started to shake. Then, he screamed, he screamed in a language Steve didn’t understand, but he was pretty sure that whatever the exact words were, they were pleas. Steve wanted to reach out, touch him, reassure him, but Natasha stopped him.

“You have no idea how he’ll react,” she warned him in a low voice. “During his last mission, he had to get rid of you. He might just snap back into that. Please go.”

Steve shook her hand off of his arm. “I’m not leaving him. Bucky, breathe.”

Apparently, those were the magic words to make him stop shaking.

Unfortunately, those were also the magic words to drain all emotion, all personality from his eyes, until he turned his face to Steve and looked more dead than any corpse he had ever encountered. That look lasted for about three seconds.

Then, he launched himself at him.

“Bucky,” Steve choked out, as he was pushed down into the cushions of the couch, a real metal fist clenching around his windpipe. It took him all the willpower he had to shove his foot between Bucky’s legs, and kick him off of him with the other. The distraction wouldn’t last long, but long enough for Steve to get on his feet, run to the kitchen, rip the door off of one of the cabinets and grab it as a shield. “Bucky, this isn’t you,” he said, trying to stay as calm as possible, but the look in Bucky’s eyes as he threw a handful of porcelain shards at his face was enough of an answer.

The Bucky he was trying to reach, was currently unavailable. Leave a message at the beep.

“No.” He dodged a vase, also to his head. “Buck.” A meat knife at his face; it went through the barrier of the door, but only lightly grazed his cheek behind it. “You’re safe. It was just the news.” Christ, he sounded hoarse.

“Steve, get out of there!” Bruce called out. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing, just go!”

But he couldn’t go. He couldn’t run and leave and let Natasha and Bruce lock him up in this room until he’d calmed down - and probably risk their lives too by doing so. Bucky knew him. If anyone knew how to fix this, how to calm him down again, it was him.

Except he didn’t know how to fix this, he realised, when Bucky had grabbed him by the throat for the second time, this time without leaving any room to fight back. Not that he didn’t try, he tried all he could, but even the hardest pushing hands go limp after being oxygen deprived for long enough. The strongest legs stop kicking once they get too heavy to lift. He had never seen Bucky’s stormy grey eyes that empty, and in all honesty, he felt a little sorry that he was going to die without seeing their spark one last time.

“ _Soldat_!” Steve knew that voice. He didn’t know why, or whose voice it was, but he definitely recognised it. “ _Soldat, otstupleniye_ ,” the voice ordered, and the pressure around his throat was gone.

It didn’t sound pretty, the attempts to breathe through a badly injured throat, but after some of the most painful coughs in his life, he made it happen, even though his knees immediately buckled anyway. With his face down, on his hands and knees, he almost missed how Natasha walked up to Bucky, until she was about six feet away from him, and gave him a shaky nod.

“ _Vol’no, Soldat_ ,” she instructed, and Bucky’s shoulders sagged. Then, she went up to him, muttering all sorts of reassuring sounding phrases in what Steve presumed was Russian.

“Thanks,” Steve managed to croak, through ragged breaths.

“Hoped that that would work, yeah.” As soon as Bucky had sat down, she gestured for Bruce to help her get Steve on his feet again. “Don’t expect him to be his full self again for the next couple of hours. I don’t think I snapped him out of it completely, just gave him orders to stand back.”

Steve felt his legs shake hard enough that he clung to Bruce just a bit longer than necessary to sit down, just to make sure he wouldn’t drop to his knees again. “So, careful with -”

“No talking,” Natasha interrupted. “That’ll only make it worse. I’m taking Bucky to his room. Steve, you’re on a twenty-four hour Bucky ban until I say it’s safe to see him.”

Steve inhaled, coughed, and flinched at the horrible pain in his throat. “I -”

“No talking,” Bruce repeated, as he pulled another chair up to sit across from him. “I’m just going to check if nothing’s seriously damaged. Put your hand up if I touch anything that hurts.”

Steve didn’t care about Bruce’s prodding. He cared about Natasha saying things in Russian again, he cared about Bucky standing up and walking off, he cared about how fucking rotten he would probably feel in the twenty-four time span after this. He couldn’t let him go through that alone. After Bruce had told him that his throat was probably going to be fine, as long as he wouldn’t talk for a while, he almost got up to go after him. Bruce pushed him back down before he even got all the way up.

“Steve.” His voice was soft as always, but with a hint of a warning too. “I know you love him, we all do, but he really does need that time alone. You can’t drag him through the whole recovery process, or he’ll never be able to do it when you’re not around.” Steve opened his mouth to protest, but Bruce shot him a look. “No. Trust me, I’ve walked that mile in his shoes, I know how it all goes down. Natasha’s good at this. She’ll keep a good eye on him, I promise.”

 

And she did. She stayed with him all afternoon, and all night; Steve could hear her Russian babbling through the wall. After two hours or so, she started putting in more and more English terms, until she’d slowly but gracefully transitioned back to his mother tongue. She defended him to the point of castration threats when Tony slammed on the door at eight in the morning about the ruined kitchen. And as the hours had finally, finally crawled by and noon came by, she was the one to escort him back to Steve’s room - not the living area, they had agreed, not until they were all confident that that wasn’t triggering, but reunited anyway.

Bucky looked exhausted. Not just that; drained. Pale skin, hollow eyes, dark circles around them. He looked sick, standing there in the doorway, and it didn’t help that he looked like he’d just seen a ghost.

“Oh my God,” he breathed, as he stared at Steve. He couldn’t blame him; if the mirror hadn’t lied, the bruising from yesterday had turned a rather impressive shade of purple. Like someone had painted a horror scarf around his neck. “Steve, I…”

“Don’t,” he rasped. He got up from his bed and walked over to him. “How are you?”

“I should be asking you that question.”

Natasha cleared her throat. “Just for the record, mutual guilt doesn’t really solve anything, ever.”

Steve shot her a look. Even if he was grateful for everything she’d done in the past twenty-four hours, he really wasn’t the best at dealing with her honesty when they both hadn’t slept all night. “Could we have a moment?”

She left without any protest, thankfully, and closed the door behind her. Suddenly, Bucky looked a little lost. “I don’t really think I know where to start, except ‘I’m sorry’, and then some.”

Steve laughed, sort of. He blew air out of his nose in a louder way than usual, at least, so the message came across. “I know, Buck. I know,” he muttered, as he pulled him close and wrapped his arms around him. After a few moments of hesitation, he felt two strong arms close around him as well; one cold, one very warm. Deep breaths; smelled like Bucky. Smelled like home. In the back of his mind, Bruce’s words from the day before kept lingering. “Buck, you know I…”

The words wouldn’t come. Bucky didn’t get it, and almost pulled back. “Hmm?”

Immediately, Steve’s grip became a little tighter. His heart was hammering. Then, he let go just a little bit, just enough to pull back, bring his hand up to Bucky’s cheek, and run his thumb over his cheekbone. He could still feel the burn in his throat, still felt the purple print of hands around his neck, and he knew that this was far from perfect, but he also knew that there were things more important than that and that Bucky really needed to know that he felt those things.

There was a slow smile spreading on Bucky’s lips. It didn’t grew wide, didn’t light up his eyes, it wasn’t grand, but he closed his eyes and turned his head just enough to press his lips to the palm of Steve’s hand, so it was enough. “I know.”

He knew. It felt like someone had slammed a flamethrower between his ribs and set his insides on fire in the best possible way. Bucky knew, and he knew, and they were scarred and ripped out of time and more than a little messed up, but that was okay, because he had Bucky and he would never let anyone take that away from him again, he promised to himself, loud and screaming in his mind, as he leaned in and kissed him.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, as fate would have it, Tony was the first one to find out. Even worse, because again, it was during a movie night - except this time, they weren’t really watching whatever movie they had put on.

“What, seriously?” Even without looking, Steve could hear the disapproval in his voice. He briefly considered sitting up straight again, or at least pull his hand away from under Bucky’s shirt, but the fact remained that he really did enjoy rubbing up Tony the wrong way when he was being a drama queen. “Okay, we need to set new rules in this house, or this is going to get out of hand. Like a sock on the doorknob, that sort of stuff.”

Slowly, Steve decided to climb off of Bucky just a bit. Not enough to make Tony comfortable, but at least enough to give Bucky the chance to sit up, if he wanted to. “We guessed that four in the morning would be a safe time to have the living room to ourselves.”

Tony laughed, as he sat down next to Steve. “Almost everyone who lives in this house suffers from PTSD. Guess again. What are we watching?”

Steve raised an eyebrow at him, then repositioned so he was just sitting side against side with Bucky. “No idea. We picked the first thing it suggested.”

“And that was _High School Musical_?” Tony asked, clearly very amused. “Well, congrats. Not only on you two finally figuring your shit out, but also becoming a stereotypical teenage gay couple quicker than I could even joke about it.”

Still, he didn’t switch it to another movie, so there they were, watching High School Musical at four in the morning together, and for some reason, it felt like everything was kind of alright, in that moment.

The rest kind of figured it out gradually. Natasha wasn’t surprised in the slightest, Vision congratulated them, Bruce said he was very happy for them, and Wanda only gave Bucky a playful stump on the shoulder and a wink as she saw him greet Steve in the kitchen with a kiss. “Happy to see you that happy.”

Bucky chuckled. “Happy to see Vision makes you so happy.”

Wanda’s jaw coloured red. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t.” 

It didn’t mean all was well. They knew that. Everyone knew that. Bucky’s nightmares stuck around, even if they came less and less frequently. He couldn’t even leave the building, because after Natasha had put all HYDRA’s files on the internet, enough people knew Bucky’s face and knew he was a wanted man to make the streets a dangerous place for him. It was all a ticking time bomb, having to live in a building that Tony owned, having to seek refuge with him after what had happened in 1991, and it was just a matter of time before Tony would eventually find out in one way or another, and the whole thing would fall apart. They both knew this honeymoon phase couldn’t last. One day that would end, and they both knew it wouldn’t be pretty.

But every morning Steve woke up and saw his Bucky next to him, with his hand on his heart and such peace in his expression, he knew that opening that door so long ago had been the best thing that could have happened to him. And, even more important, he knew that whatever hell was still coming for them -

His Bucky would be worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Ne dvigaysya - don't move  
> Ne delayte etogo - don't do this  
> Soldat, otstupleniye - soldier, retreat  
> Vol’no, Soldat - at ease, soldier
> 
> Don't forget to leave a comment if you liked it, I love feedback! ^^


End file.
